Dr. Francis Collins presents The Road to Wisdom at the 2024 Boston Book Festival
Collins: “It’s not a book that I really felt a strong urge to try to put together until it seemed it was pretty much impossible for me to resist.”
Vivian Hir–The Tech
On Saturday, Oct. 26, former Director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Dr. Francis Collins presented The Road to Wisdom, his latest book, at the 2024 Boston Book Festival’s Science and Society Keynote. Collins was joined in conversation by Boston Public Library President David Leonard. Collins began the speech by first discussing key ideas in The Road to Wisdom, and then ended with solutions to address America’s hyper-partisan society. A renowned physician-scientist, Collins is known for leading the Human Genome Project and discovering critical genes for diseases such as cystic fibrosis.
In The Road to Wisdom, Collins outlines four crucial points for logical thinking and sound judgment: truth, science, faith, and trust. Citing his multifaceted experiences from science to religion, Collins argues that these values can coexist without contradicting one another.
What motivated Collins to write this book was seeing the rise of misinformation and distrust in society, which was evident in the COVID-19 pandemic. “It’s not a book that I really felt a strong urge to try to put together until it seemed it was pretty much impossible for me to resist,” Collins said.
Collins then transitioned to discussing wisdom and its distinction from truth; wisdom is based upon knowledge of other key elements like experience, judgment, and morality. Good judgment comes from experience, although experience involves bad judgment at times. Major failures in his own scientific career shaped Collins’s approach towards science. “It actually built in me a desire to really be thoughtful about how you design experiments,” he said. “You have to recognize that science is not about getting the answer you want.”
Originally, Collins was an atheist who did not see religion entering his life. What inspired Collins to become a person of faith was an enlightening question a religious patient asked him when he was a student in medical school. “She asked me very directly, ‘What do you believe? Think about that,’” Collins said.
He came to the conclusion that it was difficult to defend atheism. “It’s the assertion of a universal negative, which scientists aren’t really supposed to do, because you never have enough data,” Collins remarked.
Viewing atheism as a belief with limitations, Collins converted to Christianity at age 27. Collins admitted many people expressed concerns that his faith would conflict with his science, but he considers faith as “another way of discerning a different kind of truth,” especially truths related to “good and evil.”
Returning to the principles in The Road to Wisdom, including how one distinguishes opinion from fact and belief from truth, Collins explained these differences by describing a series of concentric circles. The innermost circle consists of indisputable facts (e.g. 2+2=4), while the next circle consists of established facts, such as the Earth rotating around the sun. Following this layer is an outer circle of uncertainty, with the final layer being opinion.
What makes this visual useful is that it forces people to consider what type of claim they are using. Collins affirmed that people can have different opinions. Established facts, however, should not have room for differences; or else this disrupts “the constitution of knowledge,” a common knowledge base agreed upon by everyone.
The disruption of knowledge and facts in society was clear during the pandemic, considering the widespread misinformation regarding COVID-19 and vaccines. As NIH Director, Collins was heavily responsible for directing the country’s response to the pandemic—developing and testing a new vaccine was a major project. Despite the vaccine’s high efficacy, 15% of the U.S. adult population did not get the vaccine by December 2021, according to a CDC report. The consequence of vaccine hesitancy was startling for Collins. “234,000 Americans died unnecessarily,” he lamented. “Our culture wars are killing people. What happened to us?”
What caused people to doubt the government’s information about the vaccine? “The public was not necessarily in a good space to think critically about this [COVID-19],” Collins said, recognizing that misinformation on social media played a role. However, he acknowledged that the government’s lack of effective communication was a contributing factor, noting that the reasons for distrust came from communication that seemed “self-contradictory” and “erratic” at times. Looking back, he wished he did a better job explaining that changes in recommendations were based on the pandemic’s evolving and uncertain nature.
Although the rise of misinformation during the pandemic suggests a bleak future, Collins believes there is room for conversation across the political divide. In order to understand why some people disagreed with the pandemic’s public health policies, Collins joined the nonprofit organization Braver Angels, which fosters cross-partisan conversations.
Collins admitted initial conversations are uncomfortable, but he strongly encouraged the audience to have these difficult conversations. For example, Collins eventually understood why his conversation partner from rural Minnesota opposed the lockdown—the pandemic significantly affected his trucking business, and his children could not attend school. “No wonder this guy came forward saying, ‘This was a botched effort,’” Collins said. He emphasized the importance of listening and understanding the other person instead of “planning your snappy response.”
“The politicians are not going to solve this, and I don’t think the media is either,” Collins said. “We are the ones that are going to have the chance here to turn this around.”